YMCA after school program emphasizes healthy eating and fitness

Monday

Sep 24, 2012 at 12:01 AMSep 24, 2012 at 3:32 PM

For lots of kids, there’s only a small window in the day to get outside and get moving during the school week.

Bernie Petit

“They’re getting a very limited amount of physical activity in the school day,” said Steve D’Avria, district executive director for the Gaston County Family YMCA. “By the time six o’clock hits, it’s dinner, bath and family time.”

But for the local YMCA afterschool programs, the limited time young students have between the time school ends and the time their parents pick them up and take them home for their nightly routines is an opportunity to teach them about healthy lifestyles.

To promote physical activity and healthy eating, the Gaston YMCA afterschool program is incorporating three afterschool wellness initiatives this school year. Its Y4210 program, which will begin the first week of October, will encourage kids to have at least five servings of fruits and vegetables, two hours or less of “screen time,” at least one hour of exercise and zero sugar-sweetened drinks each day.

A Y Go Far running program, which begins this week, will prepare students to run in the Spencer Mountain 5K in November and Run for the Money in April. All afterschool sites have implemented new YMCA Healthy Eating and Physical Activity Standards, which establish a minimum expected activity times, designates water as the primary beverage during snack times, limits screen time (watching TV, playing video games, using computers, etc.) and provides parent education to encourage healthy behaviors at home.

The purpose of the new afterschool initiatives is to fight the burgeoning childhood obesity problem that faces this nation, D’Avria said. More than 23 million children and teens in the U.S. ages 2 to 19 are obese or overweight – one in every three children. In North Carolina, 20 percent of children ages 2 to 4 come from low-income families and one out of every seven low-income children in that age range is obese.

Gaston Family YMCA afterschool programs serve about 525 kids at 15 sites across the county. Those enrolled are in kindergarten through eighth grade. Afterschool programs will provide 45 minutes to an hour of physical activity daily, which includes free play and a planned activity. Candy and sugary soft drinks, which the YMCA used to sell to students, have been eliminated and replaced with fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

The YMCA is also working to make gymnastics, judo, dance and swim lessons more accessible for students in the afterschool program, D’Avria said.

“It’s a timing opportunity,” D’Avria said. “We’ve got them at the perfect opportunity to do it and the Y is a perfect organization to be leading that charge.”

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